ISIS flag found next to Algerian terrorist's body

A day after the anti-terror raid in Brussels in connection with last year’s Paris attacks, cops shoot one terrorist; two others are still at large

Brussels: Police found an ISIS flag next to the body of an Algerian killed during a major anti-terror raid in Brussels, prosecutors said yesterday, as investigators raced to track down two suspected extremists who had escaped.

The house where the shootout took place during an anti-terror operation in the rue du Dries-Driesstraat in Forest-Vorst, Brussels. Pic/AFP

The man had been identified as Mohamed Belkaid (35), an Algerian national who was staying illegally in Belgium, the federal prosecutor said a day after the chaotic shootout. Two suspects were still at large after the gun battle, which erupted as Belgian and French police searched a property in connection with the November Paris massacre.

Prosecutors said at least two suspects fired on police as the door was opened during a search of the property in the quiet Forest district, wounding three officers including a French policewoman.

A series of gun battles then erupted, wounding a fourth officer in the head, and a man was “neutralised by a sniper of the special forces when he tried to open fire from the window of the flat”, spokesman Thierry Werts said. “Next to his body was a Kalashnikov, a book on Salafism and an Islamic State flag,” Werts said.